Reharmonisation Part 10: Pandiatonicism

We had a look at the fundamental (re)harmonisation techniques in the past nine parts of this ongoing series and were looking mainly at concepts that are simple to apply and understand and yet can be extremely effective. From this part on, we will however look at more complex strategies that are also not as obvious. 

The more we dive into this, the more we will move away from easily digestable harmonic sound worlds and also away from harmonic situations that would commonly be considered "beautiful" sounding. However, the strategy that we are looking at today can create (in my opinion) some of the most beautiful harmonic worlds. So let's dive right in.

All of the strategies that we were looking at so far didn't question some fundamental cornerstones of harmony: we basically stack chords out of thirds, sometimes leaving one out, sometimes adding notes in between but basically, the fundamental approach is to stack thirds into a more or less complex sounding harmonic situation. Also, we didn't question the gravity of cadential harmony, like the ultimate harmonic force of a V-I.

With looking at pandiatonic harmony today, we start to leave these concepts partially behind. Looking at the word "pandiatonic" it basically explains already what it is about. "pan" stands for "all encompassing" (we all have been struck by a PANdemic) and diatonic stands for well.... diatonic.

In a way, pandiationicism is the "little sister" of 12-tone music. While in 12-tone-music, all chromatic notes get the same harmonic importance (and in its strict form are not allowed to repeat before all other 11 notes have been played), in pandiatonic harmony, the notes of a diationic scale (e.g. major, lydian etc.) get an equal harmonic importance.

The definition of pandiationic is a bit blurry depending on who you ask. Wikipedia quotes the following definition:

Pan-diatonicism sanctions the simultaneous use of any or all seven tones of the diatonic scale, with the bass determining the harmony. The chord-building remains tertian, with the seventh, ninth, or thirteenth chords being treated as consonances functionally equivalent to the fundamental triad. (The eleventh chord is shunned in tonic harmony because of its quartal connotations.) Pan-diatonicism, as consolidation of tonality, is the favorite technique of NEO-CLASSICISM.

This basically sums it up but in more practical approaches to this strategy, we see it being used more freely (with lesser tertian structures etc.). The important thing to understand is that in a pandiationic approach it might be very possible to have tertian structures and chords or maybe even harmonic paths that seem like they are plain traditional approaches, however the way you conceive these through pandiatonicism is different. In a way we could say that you start with a different mode of thought and sometimes end up with similar results as the traditional approach, but sometimes you don't.

Before I get to showing you a practical example of this technique, I need to explain a few more things. This technique is not an either-or situation. You can decide to write an entire piece in a pandiationic way or just a few bars. It should be seen as another colour that you can pick from your harmonic colour palette. Generally, I'm not a huge fan of following rules for the sake of following rules, so while this principle and its application is relatively clear, this doesn't mean that you don't have wiggle room with it, so if you break out of the strict application because something sounds better then go for it.

A typical approach would be to pick a diatonic scale that you want to use and construct a sound out of the available notes that you have, disregarding classical chord construction. While this seems like an "anything goes" and the absence of typical rules seems like it becomes structurally random, you need to find the structure in other places. I personally tend to use certain intervallic constructions, for instance if you base a harmonic situation on a lot of fifths, you get a more open sound, if you build it out of more dissonant intervals, you get a "tighter" and sharper sound. This is also where a limitation of this technique is. It is more challenging to build different degrees of harmonic tension with this technique which leads to it being more challenging to build tension and resolution within this technique. Consequentially, extended periods of a pandiatonic approach feel like they start to feel like they're idling along, flowing into a grayish harmonic world where it "all sounds the same". The more you explore this technique the more you will notice that as soon as you pick a diatonic scale, all the pieces that you come up with in that scale somehow sound the same. 

So personally, I see this approach as something that can create a interesting and also quite spectacular sound world for a while but doesn't carry for extended periods of time.

So after all the groundwork, let's have a look at a practical example. After all the things above, I expect you to presume that the example that I'm gonna show you is going to sound clustery, unstructured and possibly weird.

Brace yourself for Prologue from THE STATUE by American composer Charles Fernandez:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrTdk-llm0I

Kind of unexpected, huh? I personally feel this piece to be emotionally very rich, absolutely gorgeous and very filmic sounding. When I heard it the first time, I felt like this sounds very unexpected and very familiar at the same time.

Fortunately, we have the score sheet to have a closer look, and there is a lot to unwrap here:

Let's maybe first try to figure out what diatonic scale we're working with here, so as we're used to, let's find a chord that feels like a tonic, right? This is where the problems with pandiatonic music begins. Somehow, it all sounds like a tonic and somehow it doesn't. This entire piece avoids a clear harmonic statement until bar 19, when we reach a unambiguous Db major chord. Almost anything before that evades a clear definition in a way that you couldn't put a clear chord symbol on it.

So we seem to be in some sort of Db scale. With this knowledge we just need to collect our scale material from the rest of the piece and end up with Db lydian (Db, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb, C). There is not a single chromatic diversion from this pitch material in the entire piece. However, note that this property alone doesn't qualify the piece to be pandiatonic yet, it could also just be a diatonic piece in Db lydian.

The pandiatonic approach can be seen in the way how the harmonies are set up. Let's look at the very first chord:

We have a fifth in the violas (Db and Ab) and a fifth in the violins (C and G). If we wanted to find a chord symbol for that, we could say its a Dbmaj7(#11/no3) or is it an Abmaj7(add11)? Most likely we would consider and hear the lowest note as a fundamental so we would probably hear it as some sort of Db but the lack of the third makes it more ambiguous. The construction of this chord seems to be motivated from another source which in this case seems to be the intervallic quality. The two stable fifths give it a very open sound while the major sevenths create this nice rub that makes the sound emotionally rich. So it seems like the source for this chord isn't a "I want a Db something chord" but more of a "I want that open fifth sound with extra rubs". 

You will find a similar strategy throughout all voicings in that piece, sometimes reaching a relatively unambiguous chord but more often more based on intervallic construction and their sound.

I mentioned it already before that extended periods of this technique quickly sound dramaturgically relatively flat as it all more or less "sounds the same", so you need to put more focus on creating a dramturgy through other parameters. Here, we have a lot of focus on registers. You can see these three waves that he builds that keep moving down and with every wave span over a greater range. This of course creates a dramaturgy that has tension and resolution and carries the piece. Similarly we see little motivic ideas like the motion that is being established in bars 2 and 3 and keeps reappearing in several moments of the piece.

Due to this piece being relatively short and only strings, I would encourage you to go through it and analyze the voicings as well as hunt down these moments that go against what would be common (e.g. expectable resolutions) and clearly show a different approach to the piece than "normal" harmony. Also, pay attention to how he creates dramaturgy within the waves, how voicings become more dense towards more climactic moments. Going through all the details would just be too much for this post.

Also, I would encourage you to apply this principle in a dedicated piece where you can practice it as it takes a bit of rewiring your brain to get the hang of this. You will also notice that if you pick lydian, you will end up with a piece that sounds more or less like the one above but give it a go and try some other scales to see how it changes their hue.

Lastly, in order to clarify which scales you are using you should try to slightly emphansize the root note in your piece to communicate to the audience which note they should reference what they are hearing to, otherwise they might become lost in your piece.

You will notice these things anyway as soon as you approach writing something this way so these are just a few hints of what to expect.